LUX ZIFFER | 2001

an anonymous award for those who feed or fight the digital dragon

“everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights

For the first time, the LUX ZIFFER Prize was awarded at transmediale.01 in Berlin. LUX ZIFFER #1 was given to Daniel Garcia Andujar for his CD-Rom Phoney TM, which disturbingly realistically simulated illegal access to non-public data and other unlawful internet actions.

Lux Ziffer #3 was awarded at transmediale.03 to the anonymous artist Vladimor Chamlkovic, also known as Melhacker or Kamil, for his project “scezda,” a polymorphic super-worm virus threat in the event of a war outbreak in Iraq, for his invention of boolean revenge and political binarization.

LUX ZIFFER #6 is primarily aimed at those artists who refuse to submit to apparent laws of the digital universe but instead feel challenged to cleverly and creatively circumvent, subvert, reinterpret, or even turn them against themselves. The prize, awarded by an anonymous collective, is offering a cash prize of 666 euros for projects that pursue a ‘cannibalistic digital concept for the future.’

Let there be light.

BINARY DEMOCRACY: Boolean revenge and political binarization

Andreas Broeckmann: By way of closing, I would like to read you the jury statement of the obscure Lux Ziffer award, which has been awarded for the second time at transmediale last February. Like the anonymous jury, I do not want to infer that the winning project is an art piece; but I do want to suggest that we look for art projects that are able to elicit such excited responses as this one:

“everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” article 19 of universal declaration of human rights

the anonymous award lux ziffer 03 goes to the anonymous artist vladimor chamlkovic alias melhacker aka kamil for his project “scezda”, a polymorphic superworm threat.

he has successfully infected the international press with a new virus: mistaking al qaeda for al gorithm thus feeding the myth of cyberterrorism and mass hysteria.

his threat to release a blended megavirus in the case of a us attack on iraq introduces new parameters to media art: boolean vengeance and political threat.

“scezda” is supposed to be a 3-in-one recombination of sircam, klez and nimda, the three virii having had the most impact within the last year. however, melhacker’s past background in artistic success is rather poor by number of infections, distribution, threat containment and ease of removal. in terms of quantity, his work has failed. in terms of quality, his publicity attack obsoletes the real existence of “scezda”, it has already raised a profitable discussion of security myths and hysteria amongst corporate fear-feeders: trojan whores consuming trojan horses, spreading the news of worldwide economic damage and loss of daily lifestyles.

we do never wish to see “scezda” in the wild, because this would merely mean, that fossil panic has triggered war. and this is bad. and so are we.

if the unwise have an unwise leader, all are led to ruin.

Thank you for your attention.

an anonymous award for those who where given the deepest kiss of code

“Zusätzlich zum «transmediale.01»- Award geht der anonym gesponserte Preis «lux ziffer#01» an «Phoney TM» des Spaniers Daniel G. Andüjar. Wie eine moderne Kriegswaffe greift sein Programm empfindliche Telekommunikationsstrukturen an. Beim Preis für Artistic Software, der zum ersten Mal verliehen wird, steht die wachsende Bedeutung der künstlerischen Dimension von Programmierung im Vordergrund.”

https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/898501.lux-ziffer-spendiert-kunstpreis.html

https://archive.transmediale.de/content/award-ceremony

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